The mural that once graced the ceiling had faded, its naked and fornicating gods and goddesses now grotesquely distorted by water damage. Every seat in the groundlings had been torn out, leaving a space as big as a ballroom between where he stood and the orchestra pit from which a jig floated.
There were people everywhere. Almost everyone danced, some in couples but others alone, as if they couldn’t keep their feet still long enough to find a partner. The setting was strange, but the people were stranger still. Everywhere he looked, the eccentric mingled with the mundane.
Around the edges of the room, small tables had been set up, each with its own cluster of chairs. At one, identical twin sisters sat with a pack of tarot cards laid out between them. To his left, Alex spotted a white terrier tottering on hind legs as its owner weaved circles around it.
Elsewhere, someone had suspended a tightrope between two chairs. While a man weighted each seat, a group of young men and women took turns wobbling across the rope. Like the man and his dog, this didn’t seem to be a deliberate attempt to entertain anyone but more as if they’d seen an opportunity for a spot of practice and didn’t much care whether people watched or not. Most peculiar of all was a man dressed all in black, a top hat on the table in front of him. On catching Alex’s eye, he reached into the depths of the hat and withdrew a gray pigeon. The bird took wing and soared up into the gods.
An old woman with a careworn face watched its ascent. “Bloody ’ell, Jim. Couldn’t you leave ’im at ’ome? We’ll all be covered in bird shit.”
Alex nodded to the pair politely, then continued searching the crowd. Evangeline must be here somewhere.
At last, he spotted her near the stage. As always, she wore a plain black dress buttoned up to her chin and the same severe hairstyle. She was untouchable. Sexless. But he knew better, and one day, sooner or later, she would be his to touch. He knew it in his bones.
The crowd parted slightly and he noticed Nightingale beside her. They stood close together, clearly deep in conversation. She shook her head in vehement denial of something he was saying. Nightingale placed a placating hand on her arm, and everything in Alex tensed. True, the man was old enough to be her father, but the murky nature of their connection worried him. He couldn’t help but resent it.
As if she felt the weight of Alex’s stare, she glanced his way. Their gazes clashed and she stepped forward, dislodging Nightingale’s hand. Without bothering to excuse herself, she strode through the throng, ignoring a juggler who tried to get her attention.
“Your Grace,” she said when she reached his side.
“Who are all these people?”
“Friends of Mr. Nightingale.” She gave a thin smile. Yet even that slight tilt of her lips transformed her face. Whenever she smiled, he felt gifted with a glimpse behind the facade. For a moment, she showed him the true woman. All she need do was smile and he was her slave. He prayed she never realized.
“Are all Mr. Nightingale’s acquaintances performers?” Alex liked actors. His half sister Helen had grown up in the theater and spoke fondly of her life there. Evangeline didn’t fit with all these carefree theatrical folk but perhaps the woman underneath did. He wished he knew one way or the other. He wished he knew her.
“Not at all,” she said. “You needn’t look at me like that. A medium may have theater friends without being a performer herself, may she not?”
“That wasn’t what I was thinking.” Besides which, many respected mediums booked theater engagements. There had always been an uneasy correlation between the two worlds, suggestive perhaps of fraud among spiritualists but not evidence.
“What then?”
“I was wondering where you came from.”
He didn’t expect her to enlighten him, which was why he wasn’t too irritated when a cavorting couple careened into them, ending their tête-à-tête. Alex recognized them as the couple he’d followed inside.
Evangeline smiled at the woman with genuine pleasure. “My goodness, Mags. How many have you had?”
“Sorry, Evie,” Mags said, breathless from dancing. “I’m giddy as a fish.” Her well-dressed escort whispered something in her ear. “Certainly. Miss Evangeline Jones, may I present Mr. Chase?”
Ah, that was why the man looked familiar. They moved in similar circles. They’d even met once or twice. Evangeline—or was it Evie?—allowed Chase to bow over her hand. As he did so, his fair hair flopped into his eyes. He was Alex’s opposite, golden and cheerful. Somehow he doubted Chase would be of much interest to Evie. His angel liked the shadows. So did Alex for that matter. All these years of polite, even-tempered paramours, only to discover now that he truly longed for something dark and deep.
“Your Grace.” Chase nodded. “Are you here to see Miss Jones’s display? I hear you take an interest in such things.”
“Of course, but what brings you here?” Chase didn’t strike Alex as a likely spiritualist.
Chase slid an arm around his companion’s shoulder. “I follow wherever Miss Carmichael leads…or try to. The collision this evening was entirely down to my clumsiness.”
Alex looked with renewed interest at the tall blonde. This was the same woman who’d rented the first floor room at the Nimble Rabbit. Evie stiffened and he remembered how she’d defended Miss Carmichael. He wished there was something he could say to put her mind at rest. This was his fault for taunting her with the possibility that he might harm her friend that day they’d made their wager. He’d hoped they’d moved beyond that inauspicious beginning.
Didn’t she realize he would never hurt anyone she cared for?
He caught Miss Carmichael’s eye and smiled while Chase looked from face to face, no doubt trying to trace the source of the sudden tension. “Oh, I love this tune,” she said, tapping her toe in time with the music.
Chase took the hint and, excusing themselves, they returned to the dance.
“Do you know Mr. Chase well?” Evie asked. He liked this new name. It suited her better than the staid Evangeline.
“Only a little, but he seems pleasant.”
She nodded, her eyes on her friend as Chase whirled her about. “You should find a table. I need to prepare.”
Alex watched her walk away, back straight, head held high, with a pang of disappointment. No more smiles. Her mask was firmly back in place.
He found himself a vacant seat with a good view of the dancers. Earlier, he’d used the word carefree to describe these people but, whatever Evie thought, he’d seen enough of the world to suspect they drank and danced jigs to forget lives much harder than his own.
The light gradually dimmed as a young boy flitted from candle to candle, extinguishing flames with a snuffer atop a long pole. He had the reddest hair Alex had ever seen and wore a gray velvet suit. Good quality but slightly worn about the seams.